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One Good Thing About a Car

You don’t hear much positive press about driving or cars today, unless they’re edgy cars with alternative fuel sources and gaudy mileage. Walking, biking, and busing are more pro-social modes of transport, and enjoy rave reviews.

With good reason, certainly. We’re concerned about climate change, ungainly carbon footprints, obesity (somewhat a function of car dependency), oil dependency, and the price of gas.

Cars are linked to a culture of waste and sloth. A dear friend of mine once lectured that life in the 1950s was about driving your huge, gas-guzzling car down the highway, and tossing your garbage from your McDonald’s dinner out the window while you did it.

Still, there is one good thing about a car for which I’ve not found an exact replacement: It seems to make conversation between parent and child so much easier, and more fruitful.

Invariably, I find that my 10 year old tells me more from the back seat of my car, just as we’re driving to and from school, or on longer, meandering car trips. Even short drives in the daily routine seem to stimulate more disclosure of feelings and information than I’d otherwise glean.

The typical, non-car dialogue might go like this:

“How was school?”

“Good!”

“What did you today?”

“Nothing much.”

“How was lunch?”

“Good!”

And so on.

It’s nice that it’s all “good,” but… a parent craves more.

That same conversation on the stimulant of the car would include stories of what the band teacher said before recess, about how one boy is interacting with another boy in the class, about an alleged “teacher’s pet” in another class, and even feelings. I seem to ask better questions, or be wiser in my responses; my son seems to volunteer more.

I’m not sure why this is so, that the car is a conversational steroid.

Maybe it’s just because of habit. Maybe it’s the soothing, hypnotic motion, assuming that you’re not mired in nerve-jangling traffic jams.

Maybe it’s because when we’re in transit, even just between home and school, we’re in between worlds, and that naturally feels somewhat liberating, to be in spaces that aren’t bound by the habits of our home, school or work life. That might inspire conversational creativity and skill.

But I think it’s more than that, because I’ve noticed that conversations on the equally transitional space of buses or planes don’t yield that same car magic.

Buses and planes are public in a way that the car isn’t. One of the unique social qualities of a car is that it’s a place between the private and the public, or a hybrid of both. We’re in a car, out in public, but the car itself is a private space.

In this sense the car reminds me of a confessional, or a doctor’s office, which achieve the samefeat of eliciting and shielding private conversation in a public space.

The car’s design also works a bit like a confessional.

Younger children sit in the back seat, removed from the parent-confessor by the barrier of a seat, and a head rest. A certain intimacy, with distance, is ensured by logistics and geometry. The driver-parent is limited in the number of embarrassing visual or parental gestures that they can make. They can’t hug awkwardly.

Perhaps most importantly, potentially deterring eye contact or intensity is limited by the act of driving. The parent-confessor must focus ahead, on the road, and not the child, who might otherwise be embarrassed to say things that he’ll now volunteer, with the comforting feeling that he’s saying them to a person who is there, but not entirely present, or engaged face-to-face. Or, like an analyst, the parent-driver is a “blank screen” to the child in the back seat, both there, and receptive, but not engaged in the same way that they would be in non-car space, and talk.

In transit between the habitats of our lives—home, school, the office—the design of the car creates an intimate distance, in a public-private space. The conversation flows.

It’s not much to recommend the car. We still have high gas prices and climate change to worry about. But it’s one thing I’ll miss when we finally embrace the alternatives.

I am glad Dr Haag can have great conversations with her children when she is driving them around to various appointments.

I don't think that what is special here is the car, though, but the shared time. Dr Haag maintains that public transport (bus, plane?) does not afford the same privacy that a car does, and consequently might not be as conducive to sharing conversations between parent and child.

This may be so, but she neglects one of the easiest, healthiest, and cheapest forms of transport: walking.

I experience exactly these sorts of conversations when I walk with my daughter to school, to the bus stop,or to the train station. In fact, we don't even have a car because we don't need one where we live. On occasions where I do drive with her, though, I find that the stress of driving blocks out a good chunk of my resources that otherwise would be available for conversation.

So, I think that taking a walk with your child is just as conducive to conversation, if not more.

I am glad that Dr Haag has great conversations with her children when she is driving them around to various appointments.

But I think she is really mistaken in thinking that there is something special about the car.

Dr Haag maintains that the alternatives to the car (bus, plane?) are public spaces and thus are not conducive to intimate and sharing parent-child talk.
THis may be so, but she neglects the oldest, simplest, cheapest, and one of the healthiest forms of transport: Walking.

I have exactly the sorts of conversations that Dr Haag describes when I am walking my daughter to school, to the bus or train station, or to various other engagements. We have the same sense of intimacy, the same routine and familiarity, and the same sense of purpose that a car journey instills.
Better yet, I find that when I am walking with her, I can pay much more attention to the conversation and to her than when I am driving, and I have to attend to traffic, and think about routes, etc.

So, I don't think the car is special -- try walking and see whether it works just the same or even better!

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They did a study showing that, if people look in a mirror before performing some task, they perform worse, presumably because they are self-conscious. Perhaps the same is true when we are not being looked at, we have no opportunity to be self-conscious.

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We used many types of car for our luxury and privacy rather than using public transport, that's why we need to understand how much it is useful to us for maintaining the privacy of life and we select the best cars Like BMW as it give us new feature and better comfort. But The fact after buying we forgot to take a good care of BMW,so only we face problem sometimes by time of starting or unwanted sounds from stereo etc. Therefore we need to select the best dealer and service point where we will get a better service for our car.BMW Mechanic Los Angeles

I don’t think this still work these days where most of youngsters are already addicted checking and updating their social medias profile like facebook. Even inside the car, they keep holding and tapping their phone. They’re focusing more on their phone, reading facebook status updates or listening to their ipod than listening to what their parents are saying.Audi Repair

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